colinneagle writes: Watching TV on the Internet is cheaper than watching it by cable or satellite, but it's also messier.

However, for the first time anywhere, HBO will be offering its programming to TV watchers in Scandinavia without requiring that they subscribe to HBO on satellite or cable. In the US, HBO makes some of its programming available over the Internet on HBO GO, but you have to be a conventional HBO subscriber to get it. In Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, HBO Nordic AB will be available for just under 10 euros a month.

HBO, which makes the bulk of its money from its cable and satellite partners, isn't going to offer HBO as a separate service anytime soon in the U.S. On the other hand, Time Warner, which owns HBO, hasn't dismissed the idea of offering HBO as a separate service to Internet TV viewers in the States, either. At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said, "If in the long run, there's a clear development of enough people that need an a la carte offering of HBO, we'll look at it. It's not the main opportunity now."

Well, Time-Warner may not think it's time to seize the main chance of making TV more easily available on the Internet, but Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood does. Wood told Todd Spangler of Multichannel News, that “In the next 12 months in the U.S. you’ll start to see a virtual MSO [multiple system operator], a pay-TV package distributed over the Internet through devices like Roku. Companies are trying to figure out how to reach a different class of customer, maybe who don’t have cable TV.”